montanan
Whiskey Merchant
BigE - I am a big fan of MB Klein. I have no hobby shops at all in my area. I was pretty well at a standstill for years because of this until on lone retailers came on the scene. MB Klein is probably my number one place to look, although I have used others. I'm sure that Louis will vouch for them, as well as many others on the forum. The do sell at below retail. I usually get a few promotion emails a week from them also.
Kadee couplers have pretty well been the standard in model railroading for quite some time. I started working on my layout almost 30 years ago. Many, if not most of my freight equipment was build during the beginning of the layout construction, and Kadee couplers were installed on all of my locomotives and rolling stock before they ever hit the rails. In recent years other manufacturers have introduced knuckle type couplers, such as McHenry, Bachmann and so forth, but I still stick with my Kadees because they are metal, and the others are plastic. In fact I have been replacing older Kadee couplers with the smaller, closer to scale 148's and 158's. One thing I would recommend is that you pick up a Kadee coupler height gauge which sits on the rails and lets you adjust the coupler heights to the correct height. Havig a train come apart can be a pain in the butt. Kadee also has washers that can be placed between the frame and truck to raise the height of a car to the correct height.
Metal wheels have been posted on the forum also. When I started building my freight car fleet, the majority of them being old Athearn blue box kits, Kadee wheels, or even sprung Kadee trucks were installed. In recent years, companies such as Intermountain have also come out with some excellent metal wheel sets. I have been using them also. I would suggest looking into replacing plastic wheels. I have some freight cars that are near 30 years old and are still in use and I have had little or no problems with then at all because I took the time to "do it right" from the start. It can be really frustrating having derailments and one of the causes besides bad track work, can be problems with couplers or wheels.
I don't want to sound like a know it all, but I am talking from many years in the hobby and the school of hard knocks.
Kadee couplers have pretty well been the standard in model railroading for quite some time. I started working on my layout almost 30 years ago. Many, if not most of my freight equipment was build during the beginning of the layout construction, and Kadee couplers were installed on all of my locomotives and rolling stock before they ever hit the rails. In recent years other manufacturers have introduced knuckle type couplers, such as McHenry, Bachmann and so forth, but I still stick with my Kadees because they are metal, and the others are plastic. In fact I have been replacing older Kadee couplers with the smaller, closer to scale 148's and 158's. One thing I would recommend is that you pick up a Kadee coupler height gauge which sits on the rails and lets you adjust the coupler heights to the correct height. Havig a train come apart can be a pain in the butt. Kadee also has washers that can be placed between the frame and truck to raise the height of a car to the correct height.
Metal wheels have been posted on the forum also. When I started building my freight car fleet, the majority of them being old Athearn blue box kits, Kadee wheels, or even sprung Kadee trucks were installed. In recent years, companies such as Intermountain have also come out with some excellent metal wheel sets. I have been using them also. I would suggest looking into replacing plastic wheels. I have some freight cars that are near 30 years old and are still in use and I have had little or no problems with then at all because I took the time to "do it right" from the start. It can be really frustrating having derailments and one of the causes besides bad track work, can be problems with couplers or wheels.
I don't want to sound like a know it all, but I am talking from many years in the hobby and the school of hard knocks.